By Mayra Beck (Y7)
It was a dark night, the kind of night where even the moon looked scared. Scarlet walked alone down the empty street, her flashlight flickering like it was afraid too.She was trying to find her cat, Misty, who had run into the woods behind her house. Everyone in town said never to go there after sunset, because that’s where the Dead Shadows live.
Scarlet didn’t believe in ghost stories,at least, not until she heard the whisper.
“Scarlet…”
Her flashlight went out.
Something moved in the trees. She could hear footsteps, but they didn’t sound human,too slow and too heavy, like someone dragging something through the dirt. Then she saw it: a pale hand reaching out from behind a tree, covered in blood.
Scarlet froze. Her heart was pounding so loud she thought it might wake the whole forest.
The hand disappeared. Then another voice, colder this time, said, “You shouldn’t have come here…”
Scarlet ran, but the forest was twisting and changing around her. Every path looked the same dark, endless, and full of whispers. The shadows around her weren’t just shadows anymore. They were moving. They were alive.
When she tripped and fell, her flashlight rolled away, landing near something shiny. She crawled closer. It was Misty’s collar.
But Misty was nowhere.
Misty was now a ghost; death had been waiting for the right moment.
Scarlet looked up and saw her reflection in the metal of the collar. Only, it wasn’t her. The eyes looking back were black and hollow. The reflection smiled.
And then the shadows closed in.
The next morning, the police found Scarlet’s flashlight still glowing faintly in the woods and blood smeared across it.
No one ever found Scarlet.
But if you walk by the forest on a moonless night, you can still hear a girl’s voice whispering…
“Come find me.”